Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies

In 1939, events in Europe prompted formation of the NonPartisan Committee for Peace through Revision of the

Neutrality Act, which supported the FOREIGN POLICY of the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Its purpose was to mobilize public support for the president’s plan to enact CASH-AND-CARRY policies to allow France and England to obtain American arms to fight Nazi Germany. However, Germany’s smashing blitzkrieg in spring 1940 prompted concerned parties to revise the organization into a new entity, the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies (CDAAA). It was headed by Clark M. Eichelberger, executive director of the League of Nations Association, and William Allen White, respected editor of the Emporia (Kansas) Gazette. The committee advocated direct governmental aid and assistance to the beleaguered Allies short of direct American intervention. Eichelberger proved something of an organizational genius in this respect, for by that fall the committee boasted 750 local chapters in all 48 states, along with a donor list numbering 10,000 and annual expenditures of $230,000. One of its first objectives was marshaling public support behind Roosevelt’s DESTROYERS-FOR-BASES DEAL with Great Britain, whereby the Royal Navy obtained 50 antiquated destroyers in exchange for naval bases in the Atlantic and the Caribbean. It also supported the Lend-Lease program. However, its influence waned following White’s resignation for health reasons in January 1941, and many chapters of the committee broke away to join the new and more aggressive Century Club Groups, based in New York City, which agitated for direct American intervention. The CDAAA’s advocacy became further complicated in June 1941, following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, because of the aversion of many members to Joseph Stalin and Communism, so rather than imply that the Soviets were allies it renamed itself simply Committee to Defend America (CDA). The committee’s existence proved moot following the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and by January 1942 it had formally merged with the Council for Democracy to form a new entity, Citzens for Victory.

See also America First Committee.

Further reading: Lise A. Namikas, “The Committee to Defend America and the Debate between Internationalists and Interventionists, 1939-1941,” The Historian (61), 1999.

—John C. Fredriksen